


168B

by EvelynJo



Category: Oz - L. Frank Baum, Sappho - Fandom, Sappho of Lesbos, The Wizard of Oz & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29030826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvelynJo/pseuds/EvelynJo
Summary: "Just a couple of gals being pals, quoting Sappho in the moonlight". The final curse of a dying witch has imprisoned Princess Ozma. The curse that binds her is intricate and baffling, but surely couldn't withstand the efforts of her co-princess - yet Dorothy has been asked to fight the risen Nome King in a land far away. Very short vignette.
Relationships: Dorothy Gale/Princess Ozma
Kudos: 4





	168B

Ozma had not brought a candle out to the balcony, and those that were in her room were too far behind the curtains to shed any light now. But the Moon was full, and it shone down enough to turn the whole of the balcony silvery-white, and her hair a darkly shimmering pale. The lack of light gave the stars a chance to be seen, and the thousands upon thousands of glowing pinpricks in the deepest blue sky were scattered from horizon to horizon in a dome of darkness and light; it seemed like a bowl of sparkling sand, diamonds under the sun, had been scattered across a rug of Tyrian and sapphire; as though the firmament truly was a dome holding back the Heavens, and the stars were wherever the divine light had managed to break through.  
The moon-path lay over the ocean, shifting imperceptibly with the waves. The waves themselves were still barely audible to Ozma, as her ears had not yet completed the process of deciding to consider them invisible. Still audible, too, were the crickets that chirped in the summer air, still warm despite the midnight hour.  
And it was the midnight hour; for at that moment, Ozma heard the distant chimes of the bell tower, a mile away, tolling twelve whispery notes. As the last toll slowly faded, sinking into the seas around the coast, the ripples in the moon-path finally started to grow.  
Now the silver-gray ribbon of the Moon’s reflection that stretched from the horizon to the shore had a shape in its middle, a small thin form that moved with the speed of a falcon under the water and towards the shore. Ozma leaned out over the railing, trying to see if she could make out, as soon as she could, any details of the traveller.  
Ozma could not (yet she had to try), but she was rewarded anyway. A moment later, the shape leaped out of the final wave and sprang upright on the sand. The shape touched her Belt, and the sand and saltwater fell off of her as though the drops and grains had released their grips.   
“Dorothy!” Ozma called. It was unnecessary, as Dorothy knew exactly where Ozma was, but even speaking the name gave Ozma pleasure.  
Dorothy stepped to the base of the balcony. “Ozma!” she said.   
Ozma lay flat on her stomach, her side up against the base of the balcony’s bars and her head pressed against them. Her hair cushioned her head some, and she would have done it even if the bars were red-hot and she bald; on her stomach, she was four feet closer to Dorothy. Ozma stretched her arm through the bars as far down as she could.  
Dorothy reached up and took Ozma’s hand with both of her own, rubbing it and feeling the ring on the third finger. Ozma moved her own thumb to feel Dorothy’s ring.   
“Did you get any closer today?” asked Ozma.  
Dorothy sighed. “Not yet. But if we keep trying…”  
“Of course,” said Ozma. “You always keep trying.”  
“I suppose that’s true,” Dorothy said. “If either of us were fond of giving up, I suppose we wouldn’t be...well, we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we’ve gotten.”  
Ozma sighed. “Our current situation doesn’t speak well for our tactics.”  
“I get to see you every night,” Dorothy said. “And that situation is better than what most anyone in the world has, I think.”  
Ozma smiled. “Ah, but I get to see you every night, and surely that is better.”  
Dorothy said, “But couldn’t either of us just look in a mirror?”  
They both laughed, and then they held each other’s hands in silence.  
Ozma raised her hand to run her thumb and forefinger over Dorothy’s jaw and cheek. “I wish,” she said, “that I could press more than my fingertips against you.”  
Dorothy kissed Ozma’s hand. “I wish that I could press myself against more than your fingertips, my dear, so we’re really quite even.”  
“I will be released someday,” Ozma said. “And so will you. We’ll both be free, when you’re finished.”  
Dorothy nodded with all the solemnity of a magistrate. “We will,” she said. “You know that I can trust you to never give up on it, and you know that you can trust me to never give up on it, and since we won’t ever give up, we will keep our trust the whole time it takes to succeed.”  
Ozma felt tears of sadness and love and hope and longing, and blinked them back. “‘Not one girl, I think,’” she said,   
‘“Who looks on the light of the Sun  
“‘Will ever  
“‘Have wisdom  
“‘Like this  
“‘Save you.’”  
Dorothy’s hair, whitish gold in the light, drifted over Ozma’s fingers as she shook her head. “I don’t think so at all,” she said gently. “I think that there are many, many people in the world - and out of it too - who know to always keep their hope alive. Else why would so many people keep trying?”  
Ozma moved her fingers to the nape of Dorothy’s neck. “And by that,” she said, “we can see that you’re at least wiser than me.”  
Dorothy smiled again and moved to kiss Ozma’s hand again - but then the bell rang a final time.  
Dorothy sighed, and Ozma had to blink back tears again, these ones of pure sadness. “Goodbye, Ozma,” Dorothy said. “I shall see you tomorrow, and we will be one day closer then.”  
“We will,” Ozma said. She allowed Dorothy to give her hand a final kiss.  
“You do know I love you,” Ozma said.  
Dorothy laughed. “Of course I do! And you do know I love you too, Ozma dear.”  
Ozma brought her hand back up to her own level, kissed her middle finger, and then pressed it against Dorothy’s lips. “Goodbye,” she whispered.  
Dorothy walked back to the shoreline. She turned around, waved one last time; and then she touched her Belt and she was again but a thin form in the waves, rippling at supernatural speed back up the moon-path and away from her love.  
Ozma watched the moon-path until she was absolutely sure that she could not possibly discern even the faintest remnant of a ripple made by her love. Then she looked back at the stars. “‘I long for my love,’” she said,  
“‘For I am waiting for her victory as though  
“‘Like victory by sacrificial offerings in war  
“‘The cost of her having Good  
“Is time that I would spend with her  
“‘But her going from me  
“‘Is what she must do, for we know  
“‘That hers are the noblest of deeds  
“‘For that is who she is  
“‘And only after  
“‘May we reunite and toward  
“‘A life together may we go  
“‘She says this  
“‘And I know it to be true  
“‘For she must do good  
“‘And I love that in her.’”  
Then Ozma went back inside to sleep, and dream of her love.

**Author's Note:**

> I have primarily used the Anne Carson translations of the fragments which I expanded into the lines that Ozma "quotes" in this story. I don't know a word of Aeolic Greek, so I'm rather sure that my expansions are completely impossible - chalk it up to poetic license.
> 
> Thank you to the youngest child and eldest daughter of the Archangel Gabriel for the quote that inspired this story. Thanks to Tolkien, from whom I stole the moon-path. And thank you, very much, to one of the greatest poets who ever lived.


End file.
